The effect of flux’s towards Mg reduction from aluminium beverage cans

Abstract

Aluminium beverage cans scrap recycling is expected to fulfil aluminium needs in Indonesia, reduce production cost, and pollution generated. Fluxing is one of the methods that can be used to reduce impurities in aluminium alloys such as magnesium, flux also can protect molten metal reacted with oxygen. In this research, aluminium beverage cans scrap used to consist of carbonated, isotonic, and refreshing beverage cans and NaCl+KCl as flux. The holding time of salt fluxing process was 60, 120, 180 and 240 minutes and 5, 10 and 15% variation of flux mass from total scrap mass. Ingot from the recycling process tested to know the percentages of Mg reduction and acquisition of Al using XRF analysis and metallographic. The result showed that the highest percentage of Mg reduction was 77.83% on the addition of the sample of 15% flux for holding time 120 minutes, but Al reached 97.49% for holding time 240 minutes on same flux. On the addition of 10%, flux for holding time 180 minutes was reached 98.82% for yield, 71.84% for recovery, and recycling efficiency 70.53%.